Xiaomi’s Air notebooks focused on portability, the new Mi Notebook Pro focuses on power. That is not to say it’s not portable – it has narrow bezels, making it one of the smaller 15.6” laptops around, and its magnesium alloy body weighs 1.95kg.

The laptop comes with a choice of 8th gen Intel Core processors – the base version has a Core i5 8250U (dual-core) but you can go up to Core i7 8550U (quad-core). These come with 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage (M.2 PCIe SSD).

Graphics for the 1080p screen are rendered by a dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU (2GB VRAM). The screen is guarded by Gorilla Glass and boasts 72% NTSC color gamut coverage. A symmetrical cooling system with two fans cools both the processor and the GPU.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro has a full-size backlit keyboard that is 19% larger than the MacBook Pro keyboard. The keys are spaced 19.5mm apart and have 1.5mm travel distance. The sizable touchpad below the keyboard hides a fingerprint reader.

Connectivity covers most of the basics – 2x USB-C, 2x USB 3.0, a full HDMI port, an SD card reader and a 3.5mm headset jack. Missing are gigabit Ethernet, Mini DP and VGA, but those can be added with an adapter.

One of the USB-C ports is used for charging and can fill half of the 60Wh battery in 35 minutes. Did we miss anything? Oh yes, the custom Harman Infinity speakers and Dolby panoramic sound for headphones.

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro starts at CNY 5,600 (€710/$860) for the i5 version, the i7 model is CNY 6,400 (€815/$980). If you want 16GB of RAM, you’ll have to part with CNY 7,000 (available only for the i7 model, storage remains 256GB).

May be not bad for a budget laptop, but for me anything below 780 (my current card) is too weak for 1080p. My current setup struggles with new titles, so I mostly play older games (I cannot play games at below 40 fps, it looks like a slide show to me...